CBT unearths long standing behavior patterns and perceptions that hold you from a meaningful life. How we think affects actions and actions affect perceptions. We will examine thought processes to create positive change and how you perceive and think about life events.

TF-CBT helps you make up lost ground from the aftereffects of traumatic experiences in your life and developmental process. We will learn how to integrate the trauma experience and understand the trauma response system. TF-CBT is an evidence-based practice for children and adolescents that develop a trauma narrative for re-processing maladaptive thinking. This treatment has also been effective for a variety of developmental stages and complex, diverse trauma histories. Teaching new skills and altering maladaptive cognitions.

Mindfulness therapy grows a sense of awareness. Mindfulness has been described as “paying attention to something, in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). We will work on strategies for learning healthy self-care through relaxation and stress management skills. Mindfulness assists with anxiety and depression, but has also been used for greater psychological insight and awareness in variety of circumstances. We may incorporate various types including MBSR (Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction), DBT (Dialectal Behavior Therapy), or other techniques.

SFBT utilizes your existing strengths to focus on solutions instead of problems. We will move forward to make up lost ground and begin behaving differently to begin anew. We will learn how to use your existing successful behaviors to focus on realistic, positive change.

Family Systems Therapy centers on how the family relational root system impacts presenting concerns and behaviors stem from it. We will dig into how isolation and attachments in the family influence individual experience and healing.

Psychoeducation of the Neurobiological Response System teaches how the brain is wired and how the body gives and receives information from the external context. Learning about emotional regulation, the limbic system, neural pathways, and the plasticity of the brain strengthens the work of therapy. Therapy works in the body system.

Developmental Theory offers a developmental framework for understanding growth and stuck points in our lives. We are constantly changing and developing across the entire lifespan. Each stage has what developmental researcher, Erik Erikson, calls milestones to achieve. We will explore developmental milestones and strategies to successfully move through the psychosocial crisis experienced in each developmental stage of the individual and family.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), as with most therapy approaches, focuses on the individual’s present concerns. The EMDR approach believes past emotionally-charged experiences are overly influencing your present emotions, sensations, and thoughts about yourself. As an example: “Do you ever feel worthless although you know you are a worthwhile person?” EMDR processing helps you break through the emotional blocks that are keeping you from living an adaptive, emotionally healthy life. EMDR uses rapid sets of eye movements to help you update disturbing experiences, much like what occurs when we sleep. During sleep, we alternate between regular sleep and REM (rapid eye movement). This sleep pattern helps you process things that are troubling you. EMDR replicates this sleep pattern by alternating between sets of eye movements and brief reports about what you are noticing. This alternating process helps you update your memories to a healthier present perspective.

Accelerated Resolution Therapy is a technique that helps to restore mental health by changing the way distressing memories and images are stored in the brain. When we recall sad, scary, or confusing memories or situations, we experience uncomfortable emotions and feelings in our bodies. If we can change the images, we eliminate the symptoms. ART is also unique in that it combines the enormous power of eye movements to allow voluntary changes in the client’s mind with well-established therapies. Within the ART protocol, the eye movements, along with other ART enhancements, make these therapies work much faster and more effectively.

DBT helps individuals change behavioral, emotional, thinking, and interpersonal patterns associated with problems in living. The term “dialectical” means a synthesis or integration of opposites. The primary dialectic within DBT is between the seemingly opposite strategies of acceptance and change. DBT includes four behavioral skill modules, with two acceptance-oriented skills (mindfulness and distress tolerance) and two change-oriented skills (emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness).